Customer Reviews

Number Words and Number Symbols: A Cultural History of Numbers

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is great for anyone interested in the human history of our counting numbers.Every aspect of global cultural numbers is covered in this awesome book.From the dawn of the human race to the brillant Renaissanse mathematicans and Asian use of spoken nuncupative numbers,this book explains every meaning behind the development of number language systems.There are excellent foreign phrases and words about numbers explained here.We're the only animated being on the planet that records,measures and quantifies units.This is the best tome on why and how all the ancient cultures developed their own unique number symbols and how they evolved,merged or became extinct.If you're a modern numerator who always wondered about the historical meanings and progress of numbers,this book has a jillion examples.

If you have a serious interest the theories and cultural symbolism of numbers, this is a solid and still accurate resource. Though originally published in 1969, this book is a well-researched and clear overview of the ideas and concepts behind numerology and number symbolism. Unlike most stuff published today, this books isn't some "solve all your problems with numbers!" collection of nonsense, but an insightful outlook on the origins of number symbolism.

Number Words and Number Symbols is a translation of a work originally in German, and it shows. While the discussions of the origins of various cultures and languages' symbols and words for numbers is almost encylopedic in its completion, it can be very stilted reading at times.

If you don't mind sometimes long and verbose reading, then this is certainly one of the best works on the subject out there. I would quibble that Menninger gives the East less coverage than the West, but his comparisons of number words across Indo-European languages is simply fascinating. Also, too are his theories about how the displacement of one language by another in a region can often lead to weird anomalies in number counting.

Because numbers have both a physical reference and a spiritual mystery, they are fascinating. This book helps me understand the meaning of number both historically and currently.

Simply, the intellectual archaeology of our numerical universe